A foreclosed home in White Plains went up for public auction in 2010. / JOURNAL NEWS FILE PHOTO

Four years ago, with the stock market in free fall, moving trucks lining up in the Financial District, hundreds of thousands hitting the unemployment lines each week, and an apocalyptic media doling out advice on how to survive the next depression, we wrote that the junior senator from Illinois was uniquely qualified to lead the nation out of the thicket. We wrote that the housing-based economic upheaval would not be short-lived — that Americans used to quicker returns on their investments — in both businesses and people — would need to alter their expectations. We wrote that Barack Obama demonstrated a keen understanding of our long-term challenges, the sacrifices and investments required to meet them, and the capacity to hear the voices of all Americans. His performance — guiding the nation out of the thicket of economic collapse, worldwide recession and endless war, and onto a more resilient and steadier path — have proven that judgment every bit correct. On the strength of his many accomplishments — and the promise he still inspires — we recommend President Obama for a second term.

Americans especially susceptible to fiction can be partially excused for believing the opposite is true, that the nation has been stuck in George W. Bush-era amber, that nothing has improved, even if their eyes must tell them otherwise. We live in the age of the endless political campaign, where there is no respite from politics-driven distortions; indeed, the opposition party, part of it anyway, has treated the president as an illegitimate, someone ineligible to lead and unworthy of following. But the record — a long list of achievements — tells a much different story.

Creating jobs

Under the president’s leadership, the bleeding — an economy losing 800,000 jobs a month — finally stopped. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — commonly referred to as the stimulus bill — did precisely what it was supposed to: create demand where shell-shocked consumers and businesses were unable. Notwithstanding claims by the GOP — a grand total of three Republicans voted for the $831 billion package — that it “didn’t work,” the stimulus act created or preserved 2.5 million jobs and kept unemployment from cratering to 12 percent. The stimulus bill included tax cuts for 95 percent of American families. (Tax rates for average working families are at the lowest levels since 1950.) In the minds of many economists, the only failure of the stimulus act — and the president in pushing for it — was that it wasn’t big enough to meet the challenge of an economy fractured at its core, with the housing market busted and credit markets frozen. Nonetheless, it helped forge a path to better. The Labor Department announced Friday that private employers added 184,000 jobs in October, while government trimmed 13,000 jobs. More than 5 million jobs have been added in the U.S. on Obama’s watch. Unemployment inched up to 7.9 percent, as more people re-entered the job market.

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Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has offered a familiar litany for creating jobs; it is the same plan offered by John McCain and George W. Bush before him: Americans should see it for what it is: homage to a past that will not move the nation forward — certainly not all of us, and certainly in no lasting way.

Driving industry

The administration pushed through the bailout of the automobile industry; 1.45 million people owe their continued livelihood to the White House’s bold intervention. Among the conditions of the government help: requiring Detroit to build more fuel-efficient vehicles, heightening the appeal of U.S. vehicles abroad and in American showrooms. The resurgent automobile industry has been an outlier of sorts; in the next years, more and more manufacturing jobs are expected to return to the U.S., spurred by rising wages in developing nations, not to mention new thinking and policies pushed by the White House. Mitt Romney’s record on this front is as muddled as it is on others; he has both opposed the auto industry bailout and credited the White House with following his sage business advice. The voters can make of that what they will. The president also signed the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act, aimed at making it less attractive for U.S. companies to send jobs abroad. The White House also worked with business and industry to cut unnecessary regulations and red tape, without gutting environmental rules. White House policies boosted domestic energy production to the highest levels in 20 years — despite the disruptions caused by the Gulf oil disaster; foreign oil imports are at their lowest levels since the mid-1990s. In the third quarter, the gross domestic product grew at a 2 percent annual rate, a tick-up from the second quarter’s 1.3 percent pace.

Saving Wall Street

And this, too, is an accomplishment, though it still is unlikely to play in Peoria: the administration implemented the controversial Troubled Asset Relief Program, the bank “bailout” bill passed in the frantic, waning months of the Bush administration. While those beyond Wall Street can indulge in the fiction that our faltering economy could have survived the demise of the financial system, New Yorkers should know better. Wall Street is not just the symbolic center of the national economy, it is New York’s livelihood — our livelihood. The financial fixes did not end with the banks. The administration, over Republican objections, pushed through legislation — though still not robust enough — to add badly needed protections for bank consumers and to ward off future bank-related financial collapses. Underwater homeowners got help too, but there was no appetite in the early going — or even now — for more robust government intervention in the beleaguered housing market; this resistance prolonged misery for millions of distressed homeowners and slowed recovery for an economy built around homeownership. But even housing is finally bouncing back: the flood of foreclosures has receded, building and sales are up, and so are prices. For his part, Romney has offered a five-point plan for boosting the economy: achieve energy independence; improve trade; improve schools; cut the deficit and scope of government; and champion small business — all mirroring policies of the last two standard bearers of his party. When pressed, he has offered nary a detail or difference that might distinguish his plans from what has been tried before. Voters should know this: the nation already experienced the illusory benefit of the trickle-down Bush economy. We are still digging out from beneath the rubble.

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Rx Obamacare

Overcoming more Republican obstructionism, the White House passed the Affordable Care Act — the first significant fix of a health care delivery system that is a world leader in cost, but an also-ran on outcomes among industrialized nations. Obamacare bars insurers from discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions; bars lifetime caps on care; shifts health care’s focus to preventive care; provides tax breaks to encourage small-business owners to offer care; slows the budget-breaking rate of health-care cost increases; and eventually expands health care to some 30 million Americans without coverage. Are those good things? When Americans are polled on the individual components of Obamacare, the measures win overwhelming support. It’s only when the distortion mill kicks into gear that support wanes. Romney has said he would repeal Obamacare, even though it is modeled after his Massachusetts health care reform. Enough said.

Protecting families

The Obama team stood up for gays and lesbians, supporting same-sex marriage and refusing to defend the odious Defense of Marriage Act, which denies sundry benefits, federal recognition and dignity to same-sex couples. The Obama White House fought for families in other ways, putting forth credible plans for taming the nation’s red ink over time — without dealing immediate blows to the economy, entitlements or the social safety net. Bucking the Democratic Party establishment, the White House pushed the Race to the Top initiative, which compelled states to raise academic standards, heighten accountability for teachers and schools, and finally reckon with some harsh truths: gains by our students are not keeping pace with those by their counterparts in other major industrial powers. An under-discussed plank of the Obama team’s campaign platform: boosting math and science education in the U.S., thereby boosting American competitiveness over the long haul. How important is that? The truth is, while high-paying, high-skill jobs have bounced back in the Obama recovery, and low-wage, low-skill jobs have come back too, the number of middle-income, general-skill jobs continues to shrink. Wrote MIT researcher David Autor: “The polarization of employment across occupations is not unique to the United States, but rather is widespread across industrialized economies.” Romney has touted the success of Massachusetts schools, but the budget and tax cuts he supports would leave little room for investing in schools.

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Protecting America

The White House was busy on more distant fronts, closing out the war in Iraq, winding down the war in Afghanistan, supporting — to the extent prudent and possible — the Arab Spring uprisings, and trying to prevent another Middle East war, this one over the Iranian nuclear program. No less important, the White House helped restore alliances across the globe — adding new force to economic sanctions against bad actors like North Korea and Iran.

The Obama administration ended the Bush-era stop-loss policy that kept soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond their enlistment date — adding new meaning to endless war.

The White House also worked to take better care of veterans and their families. The Department of Veterans Affairs received the largest spending increase in 30 years; more resources were allocated for mental health services; new initiatives were put into place to increase hiring of veterans. Americans may still be one intelligence lapse away from the next major terrorist attack, but al Qaida is no longer the threat that it was, and Osama bin Laden, like so many of his lieutenants, is dead. It is plain that Tuesday’s vote will not be decided by foreign policy; that is a good thing for those in Gov. Romney’s camp. While he has generally supported White House policies in key areas — Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Israel — he alienated U.S. allies during forgettable, gaffe-filled trips abroad.

A second term

What would a second Obama term look like? It’s plain that it would not be as profligate as the first one has been. The negotiations to avoid the “fiscal cliff” at year’s end — that is when Bush-era tax cuts are due to expire and the first round of sweeping budget cuts commence — ensure that spending will be more restrained. The president has also discussed a new effort to broker a “grand bargain” to cut spending and raise revenues over several years — a far wiser prescription than the cuts-only austerity being sold by so many Republicans, even though that strategy has been no smashing success elsewhere on the planet. According to a recent report from the International Monetary Fund, “Activity over the past few years has disappointed more in economies with more aggressive fiscal consolidation plans.” A the same time, the White House has pledged to bolster U.S. investment in green energy fields, high technology, bio-engineering and education — in other words, investing in the pathways to good-paying jobs and an expanding the middle class. The president has said he would try anew for comprehensive immigration reform, something progressive Republicans were for, until they were against it.

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But there is more. Every indication is, given the direction of congressional races, the next Obama White House will continue to play defense — against continuing efforts to erode women’s health care choices and undo reproductive rights; against new attempts to repeal Obamacare; against reckless proposals to gut the social safety net — rather than reshaping entitlements; against unwise budget cuts that would starve important institutions — the litany from FEMA to the Education Department to the Environmental Protection Agency; against continuing efforts to turn back the clock — to an America built for the short-term, the fortunate few, and for the past.

Gov. Romney has stood with the purveyors of these throwback policies, and adopted their positions, even when they conflicted with his own. His pick for vice president, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, is testament to that. President Obama has the better plan, the better vision, and, now, the record to show for it. He has earned another four years to continue the job he started.